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The Democratic Intellect –what do we need to succeedin the 21st century?Michael Gove MP

Sir John Cass’s Foundation Lecture

2009

Michael Gove MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and FamiliesMichael Gove was born in Edinburgh in 1967 and educated at Robert Gordon’s College, Aberdeen, and Oxford University.He enjoyed a fifteen year career in journalism, mainly at TheTimes newspaper, where he was Assistant Editor. Michael waselected to Parliament for Surrey Heath in 2005 and joined theShadow Cabinet as Shadow Secretary of State for Children,Schools and Families in 2007. He is married to Sarah Gove, a journalist at The Times, and they have two children.

The Democratic Intellect –what do we need to succeedin the 21st century?Michael Gove MP

Sir John Cass’s Foundation Lecture

2009

Copyright © 2010 Michael Gove

First published in the UK in 2010 by Sir John Cass’s Foundation

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 0-9527503-3-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced ortransmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanicalincluding photocopying, recording or by any information storage andretrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.

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Sir John Cass’s Foundation31 Jewry Street, London EC3N 2Ey

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2 Sir John Cass’s Foundation Lecture

Foreword by Kevin Everett, Treasurer and Chairman, Cass Foundation 5

IntroductionThe ideal of the Democratic Intellect 6

The undemocratic distribution of intellectual capital 8

Democratising access to knowledge –the best that has been thought and written is everyone’s inheritance 11

The democratisation of public services 14

Government today – governed by the grip of the bureaucratic mindset not the ideal of the democratic intellect 17

Learning from those democracies which are showing intellectual leadership 20

Investing in intellectual capital where it counts 23

Sir John Cass’s Foundation 28

Contents

3Michael Gove MP

Sir John Cass’s Foundation is a leading City of London basededucational charity, which promotes participation and achievementin education. It takes its name from Sir John Cass (1661–1718) whowas a City of London politician and philanthropist.

The Foundation not only supports six educational institutions inthe nursery, primary, secondary and tertiary levels of education,which bear the name of the Founder, but has also providedsubstantial assistance to a large number of major educationalinitiatives in London, including educational action zones, specialistschools, parent promoted schools, theatres, academies anduniversities.

The Sir John Cass Foundation Lecture is given annually by a highprofile policy maker or commentator at the Cass Business School in London and seeks to advance debate about the future of theprovision of education in our country.

The inaugural lecture was delivered by Lord Andrew Adonis, theParliamentary Under Secretary of State for Schools on 25 June 2007and was entitled ‘Schools For The Future’. The Second Lecture tookplace on 13 November 2008 and was delivered by Ed Balls, theSecretary of State for Children, Schools and Families and wasentitled ‘A World Class Education For Every Child’.

This year the Sir John Cass’s Foundation Lecture was delivered byMichael Gove, the Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schoolsand Families. It was entitled ‘The Democratic Intellect – What Do WeNeed To Succeed In The 21st Century?’ and the Foundation is verygrateful indeed that it has been given permission to publish thetranscript of this year’s lecture.


Foreword

The Foundation is indebted to all three speakers and has beendelighted by both the quality and content of each of the threelectures that have taken place to date. It is keen to enter into adebate with those in the field of education and to exploringmeaningful and well thought out programmes that improve the lifechances of pupils and students living in London.

As the Foundation celebrates the tercentenary of the opening of Sir John Cass’s School in the City of London in 1710, it has not onlyreflected on the past, but is clearly now looking ahead as well.

These are interesting times in education and Sir John Cass’sFoundation will look sympathetically on new projects and ideas for the years ahead and is keen to engage with other high profilespeakers so that the Sir John Cass’s Foundation Lecture continues to be such a success.

Kevin Everett Treasurer and ChairmanSir John Cass’s Foundation

5Michael Gove MP

The child is the father of the man, William Wordsworth, wrote.And the place where I first heard those lines, and that name, is theplace where I grew as a child into manhood and the place thatinfluenced me more than any other – my school.

I was educated in Scotland and the virtues that shaped Scottisheducation shaped me. I learnt to love literature – Wordsworth andBurns – Lewis Grassic Gibbon and George Eliot – and I learned tovalue science – the discoveries of Faraday, Rutherford, Fermi andOppenheimer – in an environment where the love of learning wasthe highest good.

For Scotland’s character has been defined over the decades by a veryparticular approach to education. That idea has been encapsulatedin the concept of The Democratic Intellect. It is, like almost all thebest ideas, a product of the Enlightenment, specifically of the greatflowering of liberal thought that made the Edinburgh of theeighteenth century the intellectual capital of the world.

The thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment believed in the power ofreason and science, and the wider diffusion of knowledge, as thebest means of countering poverty, inequality and backwardness, thebest protection against economic mismanagement, arbitrary ruleand human misery. And their thinking was rooted in the traditionsof Scottish culture which had grown up since the Reformation.

John Knox, the leader of the Reformation in Scotland sought toestablish a school in every parish – and a college in every importanttown. He believed that every child should have access to knowledge– instead of a society built on outdated hierarchies with anunrepresentative clerical élite keeping knowledge and power tothemselves, there should be an educated population using itslearning to hold the users of power to account.

The recognition that knowledge is power – and therefore in a properdemocracy knowledge, like power, should be in the hands of thepeople – became the animating force behind the idea of theDemocratic Intellect. Scots thinkers fought for wider access toschool and university for children of every background. The idea of the lad o’pairts, the cottage born boy whose ability recommendshim for a life in education, became a potent part of Scottish self-definition.

IntroductionThe ideal of the Democratic Intellect


The pursuit, in particular, of a rigorous, scientifically-based,education for more and more, for longer and longer, became anational mission – sustained by a special respect for the role ofteacher, an innate appreciation of the worth of knowledge and anetwork of schools and universities open to talent supported bygenerous endowments, bursaries and scholarships.

The ideal of the Democratic Intellect may have been formed inScotland but it is certainly not unique to Scotland.

At the same time as thinkers from Francis Hutcheson to AdamSmith and David Hume to James Monboddo were developing theideas of the Scottish Enlightenment, the Sir John Cass Foundationwas beginning its work.

Starting with one school in the precincts of the City of London,designed to educate both boys and girls of slender means, theFoundation has gone on, over more than two centuries, to supportthe life of the mind, and democratise access to knowledge, in a waywhich is truly inspiring – and which reminds us that education isnever solely the business of the state.

your sponsorship of three academies, driving up achievement for some of our poorest children, and your support for specialistschools across London, including the sole parent-promoted schoolin London, Elmgreen School in Lambeth, is powerful testament toyour continuing commitment to spreading opportunity.

And your role in Higher Education demonstrates that insisting onthe highest academic standards goes hand in hand with practicalpreparation for the world of work.

So the principles of the Democratic Intellect are not the preserve ofany nation – or any generation.

But they need defending and extending in this nation – and for thenext generation.

7Michael Gove MP

Because one of the most serious blights on our educationalsystem today is the fundamental inequality of opportunity whichstill prevails. Indeed which is getting worse.

We should be providing more and more young people with access tothe knowledge, the academic expertise, the qualifications they needto take control of their own destiny – to become authors of theirown life story. But for our poorest children opportunity is notbecoming more equal in Britain.

The former cabinet minister Alan Milburn has argued that, ‘over the past four decades social mobility in our country hasslowed markedly’.

A recent study we undertook of how the poorest children in ourschools perform compare with the rest emphasises that as they gothrough school they fall further and further behind. Pupils eligiblefor free school meals are the very poorest in our society and fromthe moment they arrive at primary school – and as they go throughthose first seven years – they are progressively falling behind theircontemporaries.

And then, in the first three years of secondary school – they fall yetfurther behind.

And then, when we look at GCSE results, the story becomes sadderstill. Nearly 40 per cent of those children eligible for free schoolmeals fail to get a single C pass at GCSE.

By A Level, the gap is even worse. Overall, independent schools,which educate just 7 per cent of pupils, produce more pupils who getthree A’s at A Level than every comprehensive school put together.

Recent figures show that more than 20,000 young people securedthree As at A level – the basic passport necessary to secure a place atone of our top universities. Out of 75,000 children eligible for freeschool meals only 5,000 were even entered for A levels. Of these just189 got 3As. Of that 189, only 75 were boys. yet in the same year Etonhad 175 boys who got 3As at A level – one school with almost twoand a half times as many boys getting 3As as the entire populationof our poorest boys on benefit.

The undemocratic distribution ofintellectual capital


Crucially, in those areas of academic achievement which givestudents the best chance of securing a good university place – and a good job – pupils eligible for free school meals are losing out dramatically.

Success in the rigorous scientific disciplines of physics, biology andchemistry at GCSE is the best route to degree level or equivalentcourses in pure and applied science, medicine, engineering andtechnological disciplines. They, in turn, are the straightest paths to future prosperity, for individuals and the nation.

But these are paths to prosperity which are blocked for most poorchildren. Less than 4 per cent of children eligible for free schoolmeals even take GCSE Biology and less than 3 per cent of them areeven allowed to attempt GCSE Chemistry or GCSE Physics. In someof the poorest local authority areas of the country not a single childtakes GCSE Biology, Chemistry or Physics.

By way of contrast more children eligible for free school meals satGCSE Media Studies than all these science GCSEs put together. And,whatever the joys or benefits of GCSE Media Studies, there are nowmore students on further education courses in performing arts andmedia than there are jobs in the entire entertainment industry –including cinema usherettes and lap dancers.

Indeed, when we look across the range of rigorous academicsubjects, those disciplines which involve engagement with thehighest achievements of our civilization, we find the poor are,everywhere, denied access on equal terms.

While independent schools make up just 7 per cent of the schoolpopulation, they account for nearly a quarter of entries for Mathsand Physics A-levels.

In mathematics the most desirable school-level qualification is anA-level in Further Maths but that qualification simply isn’t open tomany state school pupils. Research by Cambridge Universityrevealed that when they surveyed student achievement in 2006 nota single student in Hackney, Newham or Lambeth got 3 top A-levelpasses including Further Maths.

9Michael Gove MP

Modern foreign languages are increasingly the preserve of the privatesector and selective state schools. Fifteen per cent of schools withsixth forms did not enter a single student for a Modern Languages A-level and this is a particular problem in poorer areas. No pupil inIslington, Barking or Dagenham got 3 top A levels including amodern foreign language in the last year for which we have figures.

And History is dying out in comprehensives. More than 131 schoolsdid not enter any pupils for GCSE history in 2008.

Three out of 10 schools no longer teach History as a standalonesubject to 11- and 12-year-olds. A study of 700 history teachers’experiences in almost 650 secondaries identified one school thatadmitted that it taught the whole of the key stage three curriculum– designed to span the first three years of secondary school – in just38 hours.

According to the survey conducted by the Historical Association, a third of comprehensives reported that the amount of timededicated to history lessons in year seven had reduced. Some 117schools said teaching time for history was being reduced in year 9and 5 per cent had dropped it altogether. Only 30 per cent of pupilsgo on to study History GCSE and they come disproportionatelyfrom independent schools.

More pupils at Eton got an A in history than the entire population ofchildren eligible for free school meals.

What makes the situation worse is that even when state schools dooffer these subjects to poorer students those pupils are often stilloperating at a disadvantage.

Private schools are increasingly abandoning the state-run GCSEs for the independent, and more rigorous, International GCSE or theMiddle years Programme of the International Baccalureate and they are moving away from the A level to the IB or CambridgeUniversity’s new Pre-U. Because they can offer their pupils morerigorous qualifications, with broader and deeper knowledge bases,fee-paying schools secure their students a crucial advantage when it comes to university entry and the job market. And so for thosechildren born into poverty, the routes out are increasingly harder to scale and out of their reach...


It would, of course, be wrong to see educationmerely ininstrumental terms – as a means of economic empowerment. It is a good in itself. One of the goods in which a prosperous nationshould wish to invest. The pursuit of learning for its own sake is oneof the marks of a civilized society – along with a commitment togreater equality of opportunity and a determination to give thevulnerable a stronger voice in the public square.

And it is because knowledge is a good in itself that I am so angeredby how unfairly it is rationed. I want to see access to knowledgedemocratised. I want to see more young people being taught, andacquiring a deep subject knowledge in, the hard sciences. Of course,science qualifications, particularly in physics, catapult students tothe front of the earnings queue. But for me, what is far moreimportant is that physics, chemistry and biology are the disciplinesby which our finest minds have made sense of the physical world.Immersion in these disciplines, the acquisition of the knowledge at the core of each and an understanding of scientific method,empirical reasoning, the importance of proof and the falsifiability ofhypotheses, are all ways of enriching the mind more powerful thanany I know.

I want to see more young people being taught, and acquiring, a deepsubject knowledge in, modern foreign languages. Of course fluencyin foreign languages confers an advantage on young people in anincreasingly globalised labour market. But what for me is far moreimportant is that language learning sets parts of the brain to workwhich other forms of study cannot. Neural pathways arestrengthened. And as well as intelligence being deepened so arehuman sympathies. Learning French, German, Italian or Spanishopens up different cultures, different ways of viewing the world,different moral traditions, different sensibilities. Learning thelanguage, and entering the thoughtworld, of Goethe, Schiller andWagner or Stendhal, Balzac and Zola is to engage directly with thegreatest minds of our civilization in a way which broadens humanempathy and roots individuals in a meaningful cultural landscape.

I want to see more young people being taught, and acquiring a deepsubject knowledge in, mathematics. Of course success in maths is aprecondition of success in almost any field of modern commerce.But what for me is far more important is the way in whichmathematical thinking roots habits of logic, reasoning and curiosity

Democratising access to knowledge –the best that has been thought andwritten is everyone’s inheritance

11Michael Gove MP

in young minds. Mathematics is about more than just numeracy, it is the language of Newton and Leibniz, Fermat and Fibonacci,Einstein and Gödel, the means by which some of the most originaland creative individuals who have ever lived communicated theirthoughts of greatest profundity and relevance. Studyingmathematics gives every young person the chance to see further,and more clearly, by standing on the shoulders of giants.

I want to see more young people being taught, and acquiring a deepsubject knowledge in, English literature. Of course a decent pass inEnglish will help convince an employer that a student has the‘communication skills’ the modern world of work requires. But whatfor me is far more important is that in this country there is a GreatTradition of literary achievement in which the general reader willfind the most profound, affecting and insightful analysis of thehuman condition known to man. Whether in Shakespeare or Pinter,Jane Austen or George Eliot, Dickens or Hardy, Wordsworth or yeats,the canon of English literature, as critics such as Leavis have beenright to point out, is a civilizing force in the history of mankind.

And I want to see more young people being taught, and acquiring adeep subject knowledge in, geography and history. Of course thesesubjects train the mind in the sifting and analysis of evidence, in away which recommends their students to sophisticated employers.But what for me is more important is that both are areas of learningin which the restless curiosity innate to our character, the itch toknow, is most richly fulfilled.

We are hard-wired to ask questions about what is home, to searchfor identity amidst flux – and that is what geography and historyaddress. The dimensions of our earth and the forces which shapedit, physical and political, are an eternal source of fascination to us.And the stories which shape us most profoundly, the chronology of what came before us, the causality that made our world, and ournation, the way it is, excite the human mind like almost nothingelse. That is why we instinctively accord a special place to historians,from Gibbon and Macaulay to Cannadine and Colley, AndrewRoberts and Niall Ferguson, asking them not just to explain our pastbut to guide us into the future.


Giving all children access to the best education means appreciatingthat for some vocational learning is the best way to make the mostof their talents. We need to offer these pupils credible and respectedqualifications which are tailored to their more practical abilities. The Government’s Diplomas are failing to enthuse either students,heads or employers. The scientific and business community havemade clear that the Diploma programme has been badly managed.If elected, we will stop the ‘academic’ Diplomas immediately. We arediscussing with the scientific community and businesses how thevocational Diplomas might be salvaged.

Working to spread knowledge more widely in all these areas,ensuring intellectual capital is more equitably distributed, is a greatand noble progressive cause, which should be as dear to championsof social justice as any other battle.

Indeed I would argue it is the great progressive battle of our time.

If we are to build a truly successful multi-ethnic society then weneed to strengthen the common culture we all share, and thatmeans deepening every individuals knowledge of English literatureand British history.

If we are to develop the habits of empathy, tolerance andunderstanding on which both our cohesion and our success in theworld depend then we need to spread the virtues which spring froman understanding of foreign languages, and literature.

If we are to be able to sift good arguments from bad, test foolishprejudices to destruction and win support for good causes which willbenefit those in need, then we need to instil those habits of reason,and rooting in empiricism, which spring from maths and science.

If we are to make our democracy work in the interests of everycitizen then we need to make our education system work so thatevery citizen can play their fullest part. A commitment to the idealof the Democratic Intellect – the belief that every child has a right todraw on the inheritance of the best that has been thought andwritten – is essential to the health of a modern democracy.

13Michael Gove MP

And the changes which are occurring in our democracynow only make the acquisition of knowledge on the part of everyindividual more and more important.

My colleague David Cameron has described the historical period weare now entering as the post-bureaucratic age. As a phrase, its nevergoing to be the catchiest way of capturing the zeitgeist, hardly upthere with Cool Britannia or the Giving Age or any of the other newdawns which we were invited to be dazzled by ten years ago. Butwhat it may lack in pithiness it more than makes up for in prescience.

The post-bureaucratic age describes precisely the new world beingshaped by the economic, cultural, social and technological forces ofour time.

Originally, authority in society was exercised on the basis of clan,family and local loyalties. The county gentry administered the law,individual noble houses marshalled men for conflict, news wasexchanged at the parish pump or village inn, commerce was carriedon at the market town and status was overwhelmingly a matter ofbirth. Even during upheavals which appeared to be driven byideology, like the English Civil War or the Thirty years War, thepattern of loyalties for most was dictated as much by clan, feudal or dynastic factors as anything else.

Then, with the growth of technology and internal communications,the establishment of canals, turnpike roads and railways, nationalnewspapers, national parliaments and national banks, we movedinto the bureaucratic age. The new nation states of the nineteenthcentury raised their taxes, enforced their laws, deployed their armiesand provided for the welfare of their increasingly enfranchisedcitizens by establishing more and more powerful bureaucracies. The golden age of bureaucracy was the long twentieth century – fromthe establishment of Bismarck’s welfare/warfare state after 1870 until1979. In Britain Balfour, Lloyd George, Chamberlain, Butler, Attlee,Churchill, Macmillan and Wilson all oversaw a growth in the role ofthe central Government bureaucracy, paralleled by what happened in America under FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson and Nixon.

The economic shocks of the 1970s halted the forward march of the bureaucratic state. But we only really moved into the post-bureaucratic age over the course of the last ten years as the

The democratisation of public services


knowledge, and ability to allocate resources, which used to confersuch power on bureaucracies has become increasingly dispersed.

In the last ten years information technology has revolutionised how services are provided. We can perhaps see it most acutely in the media – for example in the realm of broadcasting. When I wasgrowing up in the 1970s access to the airwaves was very tightlycontrolled by bureaucratic means. And the most powerfulbureaucrat of all was the Controller of BBC One. That single man,and it always was a man then, could control what the nationwatched and when they watched it, creating shared moments ofnational unity around the Christmas Morecambe and Wise Show ordetermining which sports should enjoy the prestige, and resources,which came from primetime exposure.

But whereas there was only one all-powerful channel controllerwhen I was a child now every one of us has the potential to be ourown channel controller. Thanks to innovations such as Sky Plus,Tivo and iPlayer we can all decide what we want to watch, from analmost infinite range of options, and decide almost withoutrestraint, when we want to watch it. This transference of power from the centralised bureaucracy to the empowered individual inbroadcasting is a metaphor for what is happening across theeconomy, and across society.

Traditional travel agents are increasingly obsolete when you canchoose everything from your flight operator to your hotel and evenyour children's slot on the white water rafts online in advance.

A and R executives, and record shops for that matter, areincreasingly obsolete when you can search online for the music you want, not the music the middle men think you should have.

Doctors and pharmacists are no longer distant gods in white coatswhen every diagnosis and prescription can be cross-checked withinminutes and a million second opinions can be downloaded instantly.

And Members of Parliament, for that matter, are no longer aloof and unaccountable creatures of unrepresentative party caucuseswhen you can monitor their votes, speeches, absences and, yes,expenses, instantly online and hold them to account publicly forany breach of faith.

15Michael Gove MP

This technological revolution has helped accelerate social trendswhich were already gathering pace, in particular the decline indeference towards established authority and the growth in aconsumerist approach towards all institutions. And all of thesefactors have been underpinned by changes in how global marketshave been operating, with capital more fluid and innovation moredynamic than ever before. So in this new, post-bureaucratic, agewhere information about performance is much more accessible,costs are more transparent, individuals more powerful andimpatience with middle men more pronounced every institutionhas to adapt.

The most successful institutions and nations will be those thatrecognise most quickly, and profoundly, how this moreinterdependent world will work. Instead of hierarchies there will be a premium on decentralised networks. The innovations whichdefine our time, whether it was the medical collaboration whichdefeated SARS, the intelligence collaboration between Sunni tribalchiefs and the US military which made a success of the surge in Iraq,or the open-source collaboration which defines Wikipedia and manynew software projects have all been generated by individualsworking outside traditional bureaucratic boundaries.

And all these collaborations emphasise that access to, and masteryof, knowledge will increasingly confer the sort of advantage whichfamily connections and inherited position used to secure.Intellectual capital will be the most valuable kind. Network theoristslike Alberto-Laszlo Barabassi also teach us that the more contactsthere are between people with a rich stock of intellectual capital, themore decentralised traffic there is between those with knowledge toshare, the more new knowledge, insights, innovation and growth aregenerated, and the more quickly errors are spotted and fixed. Theclusters of innovation around Cambridge, Boston and Palo Altoemphasise that the combination of investment in knowledge anddistributed decision-making and institutions, rather than centralisedbureaucratic control, accelerates our progress into the future.

But while the world has been moving faster and faster into a post-bureaucratic age in which knowledge matters more than ever, ourcountry’s education system has been moving backwards in the lastfew years, becoming ever more bureaucratic, with the place ofrigorous knowledge being downgraded.


In the period since Tony Blair left Downing Street the Englisheducation system has taken several retrograde steps.

Instead of fulfilling the ideal of the democratic intellect, educationpolicy is now in the grip of a bureaucratic mindset.

The physical weight of bureaucracy has increased – with schools andteachers being sent more and more paper every week to the extentthat last year each head was sent more to read in new departmentalcirculars than there are words in the King James Bible.

The ability of any institution to free itself from bureaucracy has reduced – with Academy schools, which were meant to beindependent state schools, now finding that they have lost controlover the curriculum, over staffing, over recruitment, over buildingdesign, over procurement, over IT, over who their sponsors can work with and over what their relationship with the local authoritymight be.

The curriculum has suffered as a result of bureaucratic interference –with a greater level of politically-driven prescription than everbefore, squeezing out academic subjects.

Science in particular has suffered as a result of bureaucraticinterference. The GCSE science syllabus has been devalued in a waythe Royal Society of Chemistry has described as ‘catastrophic’.Physics A Level used to teach calculus – it no longer does, but thenew Pre-U, outside Government control and increasingly adoptedby private schools, has restored calculus to its physics course.

The ability of teachers to innovate has been restricted bybureaucratic control – with the curriculum specifying programmesof study and the inspectorate checking to see if certain practices arebeing followed – so we have bureaucrats dictating not just whatshould be taught but how it should be taught.

Choices for students have been restricted because of an increasinglybureaucratic way of measuring performance. Because schools arejudged almost solely on their ability to secure 5 C passes or better atGCSE for their pupils weaker schools, most often in poorer areas,steer students towards those qualifications which boost leaguetable rankings rather than securing the greatest benefit for

Government today – governed by thegrip of the bureaucratic mindset notthe ideal of the democratic intellect

17Michael Gove MP

students. Pupils are often entered for qualifications, such as BTECDiplomas which are nominally equivalent to a clutch of GCSEs butwhich in fact have none of the rigour, or robustness, of proper GCSEs.

The Government’s latest initiatives – its Schools White Paper thissummer and the Children, Schools and Families Bill which has justbeen published only increase the level of bureaucratic control whichministers wish to exercise.

The Government’s answer to parental dissatisfaction with the rangeof schools on offer is not greater diversity and choice but a biggerrole for the local bureaucracy. The Government’s means of drivinginnovation in pedagogy and supporting teachers grow asprofessionals is prescribing, in ever greater detail, hour by hour,what should be happening in every school. The Government’sanswer to the crisis in vocational education is a new system ofdiplomas so bureaucratically confusing it creates more than ahundred novel types of qualification to which every child in thecountry has a notional entitlement and three quangoes where there used to be one, resulting in a situation so complex evensomeone as fluent as the Secretary of State can’t explain it to aRadio Four audience.

And because parents have grown used to choice in other areas oflife, because they know how much rigorous qualifications matter,particularly in areas such as maths and science and because they seehow the bureaucracy currently denies them both the choice and therigour they want they go outside the system.

A recent report by the Sutton Trust revealed that 22 per cent ofchildren nationally enjoy private maths tuition on top of theirschooling, with the number rising to 43 per cent in London. Thosefigures underline the deep public dissatisfaction with our currentsystem of education. They are a standing condemnation of theeducation bureaucracy. And they are also another powerfulreminder of the inequity at the heart of our educational system.Because while the relatively wealthy can afford this tuition thepoorer cannot. The principle of the Democratic Intellect – the ideathat all should have equal access to knowledge is mocked by thesesad statistics.


The current Government’s approach doesn’t just entrenchinequality, with the poor falling further behind wherever you look, it has also widened the gap in achievement between this nation and other democracies.

The most recent PISA results comparing our country's performanceto our competitors in a range of academic subjects emphasised whatso many observers have noted, that we are increasingly fallingbehind other nations.

And what is conspicuous about the success of other nations is that those which are generating some of the most impressiveeducational performances – and those which are achieving thegreatest gains in equity – those which best embody the ideal of the Democratic Intellect – are those which are moving in a post-bureaucratic direction.

19Michael Gove MP

In America President Obama is increasing federal funding forcharter schools – those which operate outside central and localbureaucratic control. He is pursuing merit pay for the best teachers –breaking with the bureaucratic employment practices of the past.And he is backing those school commissioners – like Joel Klein inNew york and Michelle Rhee in Washington – who are facing downbureaucratic opposition to give parents more diversity and choice.

President Obama has seen that the schools in America which helpblack and minority ethnic children most are the charter schools runby organisations like KIPP – the Knowledge is Power Programme –with long school days, knowledge-rich curricula and an expectationthat every child should go to college. Their gains have only beenpossible because their founders were prepared to defy entrenchedbureaucracies. And because President Obama is impatient to seemore minority children succeed he is, rightly, impatient with thebureaucracies which stand in the way.

In Canada the province with the best educational record – indeedthe jurisdiction in the English-speaking world with the best stateschool performance – is Alberta. And again the secret of thatProvince’s success is breaking down bureaucratic barriers. InEdmonton Alberta, the Schools Superintendent Angus Macbeathhas achieved superb results by, in effect, making every school acharter school, allowing heads to manage their own budgets, settheir own ethos and shape their own environments. Rather than the bureaucracy allocating school places the Province allows parentsto choose freely between them all. Parents and children areencouraged to visit every school and are given objective data aboutevery school. Macbeath is explicit about how this discipline hasdriven improvement for all. Good schools have expanded, weakerschools have had to up their game, competition has drivenimprovement and the same virtuous dynamic has delivered bettervalue for money.

In Sweden, educational performance has also improved followingthe break-up of the bureaucratic monopoly which saw all stateschools run by local authorities. The creation of new, non-selective,state schools outside local bureaucratic control has introducedgreater diversity and parent choice into the system, and results haveimproved across the board, with results improving fastest in thosemunicipalities with the widest range of choices.

Learning from those democracieswhich are showing intellectualleadership


Sweden isn’t the only Scandinavian nation to benefit from choiceand diversity in the school system. Denmark has a dynamic andpluralist system with a wide range of organisations running state-funded schools. And in Finland, often deliberately contrasted withSweden, diversity and choice are crucial. Schools boast a variety ofspecialisms, including providing teaching in the English language,and parental choice is highly valued.

As Andrew Adonis pointed out in a previous Cass lecture half ofHelsinki parents eventually choose to place their children in schoolsother than those which they were originally allocated.

While I’m on the subject of previous Cass lectures I must pay tributeto my immediate predecessor on this podium – the currentSecretary of State Ed Balls. In his Cass lecture last year he appearedto concede the logic of our position, give ground to our argumentsand accept the nature of the post-bureaucratic age.

He acknowledged that schools outside bureaucratic control –specifically those academies set up before he took over at theDepartment – were ‘not only driving up standards, but aspirationstoo’. He acknowledged that had meant ‘parents are voting with theirfeet’ and this increased choice and competition had crated ‘pressurefor improvement in other local schools too’.

But the Secretary of State has not followed through on the logic of his argument. Instead of giving schools more autonomy, andencouraging greater diversity, he has tightened the bureaucraticstraitjacket.

He mentioned parent-promoted schools in passing but only onenew parent promoted school has been created on his watch – andthat school – in West Sussex has been supported not by centralGovernment but by Conservatives in local Government.

When I asked him if he agreed with me, and James Purnell, thatAcademy freedoms should become the norm for state secondarieshe said no.

When we proposed extending Academy freedoms to primaryschools the Government announced that our proposal would send ‘a shiver down the spine’ of every parent.

21Michael Gove MP

When we have argued for greater freedom for professionals andgreater flexibility in teaching the Secretary of State has sought tostifle the innovation which pluralism generates, which diversitydemands, and which drives improvement. Indeed, instead ofapplying the lessons which innovation in this country, and othernations, has generated, this Government has chosen to go turninwards and take us backwards.

I believe instead that we need to adopt more and more of thepractices which characterise the best performing, and fastestimproving, education systems in the world. If we are to realise theideal of the Democratic Intellect then we need to learn from thosenations which have been most successful in democratising access to knowledge.


And as well as greater diversity and choice, one other hugelyimportant factor unites all those nations which are successfuleducationally. There is a relentless focus on the quality of teaching.And teaching is seen, as it should be in every nation, as a highprestige profession. Entry to the teaching profession in thosenations which perform best educationally is tightly restricted to the best qualified graduates in any year. The top performers atuniversity, who in this country might be tempted to go into the city,into the top law firms, into the fast stream of the civil service or intograduate traineeships with organisations such as the BBC choose togo back into the classroom.

In Finland teachers are drawn from the top ten per cent ofgraduates, in Singapore and South Korea from the top third orquarter. The bar on entry into the profession, like entry into themost attractive milk round positions here, is deliberately set high so that securing a place as a teacher is a clear sign to all that thecandidate is among the most intellectually distinguished of hisgeneration and also a natural leader. In South Korea the bar is seteven higher for entry to primary school teaching because they, quiterightly, recognise the unique importance of the early years.

We have consistently argued that Britain must always be learningfrom the most successful education nations and that means wemust act, quickly, to enhance the prestige and esteem of the teachingprofession. Crucial to that mission is raising the bar on teacherquality. We are fortunate that the quality of young people cominginto teaching is improving all the time. But we must go further.

That is why we have insisted that every new candidate for teachingmust have at least a lower second degree at undergraduate levelbefore the taxpayer will fund teacher training.

That is why we have insisted that every candidate for teaching inprimary schools should have at least a B pass in both GCSE Englishand Maths, so they come from among the top third of candidatesand have the grounding necessary to master the whole curriculum.

And that is why we have insisted that we strengthen the regimearound the current literacy and numeracy tests which police entryinto the profession, and which can be taken an infinite number oftimes, so that there is only one chance of a resit.

Investing in intellectual capital where it counts

23Michael Gove MP

We still face significant challenges however – particularly in themaths and sciences.

Only 47 per cent of those teaching maths in state secondary schoolshave any maths degree.

Only 2 per cent of graduates who go into primary school teachinghave a degree in a science, technology, engineering or mathematicssubject.

And in the B.Ed. course taken by most primary teachers, just 20–30days at most is devoted to mathematics teaching in the whole threeyears for people who will be teaching primary children maths foryears to come.

That is why today I want to go further in raising teacher quality. One of the areas where we most need to improve as a nation isscience. I mentioned earlier the woefully low number of studentsfrom poorer backgrounds allowed to attempt science GCSEs. But our performance in science across the board places usdramatically behind other nations. In Singapore 80 per cent of all A levels are sat in Maths and Science. Here it is barely 30 per cent.

The number doing Physics A level has halved over the past twenty years.

The number doing Maths A level fell from 85 thousand in the mid-1980’s to 54 thousand in 2002 before partly recovering over the lastfew years, though in the context of severe criticism of how the A Level has been changed.

The number of Physics and Chemistry graduates has fallen by over25 per cent in a decade.

Between 1994 and 2004, more than 30 per cent of the Physicsdepartments in Britain disappeared.

And all this has been happening at a time of university expansionoverall. So even as more and more people are going to university,fewer and fewer in absolute terms are pursuing these hard sciencesubjects.


In engineering and technology the number of undergraduatesfollowing these courses, as a proportion of total undergraduates,has fallen by 32 per cent.

The root cause of the problem has been our failure as a nation toattract high quality science graduates into teaching. As the pool ofscience graduates gets smaller, and the rewards for scientists inother areas grow, so the pool from which we can draw shrinks. And without great science teachers we cannot attract more andmore young people into studying science.

Deep subject knowledge in science enables teachers to make theirlessons compelling and gives them the confidence to organiseexciting practical teaching with the sort of experimental work whichcan bewitch young minds. Science teachers with a mastery of theirsubject area are better equipped to communicate a passion for theirdiscipline, better equipped to range beyond the curriculum inoriginal, innovative and stimulating ways, better equipped to see howtheir subject relates, in an infinite number of ways, to students wholerange of interests. Teachers with deep subject knowledge are less tiedto the bureaucratic programmes of study, and the impoverishedintellectual fare prescribed by the Government, and more able tocapture young minds with fresh and breathtaking teaching.

At the moment there are far too few highly qualified scienceteachers in state schools. I applaud all the steps which have beentaken to address that problem. The scientists and teachers behindThe Physics Factory have created specific centres of excellence inhigh-performing state schools which share their expertise withneighbouring schools. Some of our most enlightened fee-payingindependent schools, such as St Pauls, have also shared their bestmaths and science teachers with neighbouring state schools toprovide gifted pupils with the most exciting and stretchingscientific teaching possible.

I am a huge admirer of the individuals behind these initiatives, thepioneers of the Physics Factory, the scientist Jim Whittell and thePhysics Teacher Dave Perks of Graveney School, Tooting, and Dr Martin Stephen, High Master of St Paul’s. But we need as asociety to go much further. That is why I want to announce today anambitious programme to attract even more brilliant scientists intothe classroom.

25Michael Gove MP

We will do as President Obama is doing and create new incentivesfor new teachers. We will offer every graduate with a first or uppersecond in maths or a rigorous science subject from a gooduniversity the chance to have their student loan paid off in itsentirety if they opt to go into teaching.

For every year top science graduates spend in the classroom the state will bear the cost of paying off their loan obligations. If scientists make a long-term commitment to teaching then theentire burden of the loan will be lifted from their shoulders.

I expect that the majority of scientists tempted to take up this offerwill want to go into secondary teaching, but the offer isn’t restrictedto those who go into secondary schools. We need great minds atevery level in every school. We have undervalued primary schoolteaching in this country for far too long, and underplayed theimportance of deep subject knowledge in the primary curriculum.We have paid for that with generation after generation of youngpeople arriving at secondary school significantly behind the level of achievement enjoyed by children in other nations. I want to seethat change.

We will pay for the cost of this initiative – which could amount to as much as £40,000 per individual teacher – by abolishing a specificlayer of bureaucracy in the Training and Development Agency forTeachers. I think it is right where we can identify savings toprioritise investment in those areas which really drive educationalachievement and no priority for investment is more important inmy eyes, or yields such dividends for the future, as investment inteachers and teaching.

I hope our initiative will create a new generation of superb scienceand maths teachers, I anticipate that these teachers will make a longterm commitment to the profession, diminishing the churn thatcharacterises the system now. And I believe we will have takenanother significant step towards replicating the virtues of, indeedpotentially overtaking, the world leaders in education such asFinland and Singapore.


I place a special value on science, because I remember to this day thescience teachers who inspired me, who opened my eyes to thewonders of the natural world, who made me appreciate the scopeand majesty of the universe, who taught me the rules, laws andforces which govern creation. And it was as a child studying sciencethat I learned how to reason, how to deploy logic, how to challengeassumptions and defend propositions. In so far as I can deploy anyof these skills it’s as a result of the grounding in scientificknowledge I was given at school.

But the value I place on science is more than simply the personal. If we are to defend the principles of the Enlightenment, if we aredefeat superstition, bigotry and fanaticism then we need tostrengthen the place of science in our national life.

If we are to defeat disease, end hunger and protect the poor from environmental depredation then we need to strengthen ourscience base.

If we are to generate jobs, growth and opportunity for a generationcurrently not in employment education or training then we need tofoster the innovation which science alone can drive.

All of the virtues we associate with a healthy democracy – a liberalpolitical culture, a proper concern for the poorest and greaterequality of opportunity – are strengthened by a commitment to science. Which is why I believe we need a stronger commitmentto science.

Because it is only through investing in intellectual endeavour, anddemocratising access to knowledge, that we can ensure the nextgeneration enjoy the control over their destinies which it is our dutyto secure.

03.12.09

27Michael Gove MP

Established in 1748, and now a major educational charitybenefiting the whole of inner London, the Foundation providesfunding to schools and organisations, as well as individuals, via its scholarships and bursaries programmes.

The Foundation takes its name from its founder, Sir John Cass. Born in 1661, he served as Alderman, Sheriff and MP for the City ofLondon and was knighted in 1712.

Today the Foundation has links in the primary, secondary andtertiary sectors of education, supporting its primary school in theCity of London and secondary school in Tower Hamlets, which wasdesignated by the Department for Education & Skills as a SpecialistLanguage School in 2000, as well as the Sir John Cass Department ofArt, Media and Design within London Metropolitan University.

In 2001, the Foundation made a multi-million pound grant to CityUniversity’s Business School, which was subsequently re-named theCass Business School, and continues to provide on going support,to this and other establishments bearing the name of the founder.

In 2008, the Foundation awarded a substantial grant to theUniversity of East London towards a new state-of-the art teachingand resource centre in Stratford, which has been named the Sir JohnCass School of Education. The new building was officially opened on8 October 2009 and is already one of London’s foremost centres forteacher training. Many of its alumni are working in local schools andit is a Category A provider for secondary teacher training.

The Foundation has supported a variety of Government educationalinitiatives in schools within inner London, such as Education ActionZones, Specialist Schools and has contributed towards twoAcademies. Support has also been given to the Country’s first ParentPromoted School and the Foundation has agreed to work with theEast London Business Alliance, on employment and educationalopportunities in east London over the next three years, leading upto the Olympic Games in 2012

Sir John Cass’s Foundation


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